"Decimal" Quotes from Famous Books
 ... shutting his eyes. "The earth is the planet on which we live, and is about twenty-five thousand miles round; a decimal fraction is one whose denominator is ten, one hundred, one thousand, or and so forth; America ...
— Half a Dozen Girls • Anna Chapin Ray
... so far in the knowledge of numbers, as to have distinctive names for the ten units, and for an hundred and a thousand, with all the intermediate numbers compounded of decimal terms. To preserve the memory of their transactions, they used a bunch of threads of several colours called pron, similar to the quippo of the Peruvians, oh which they cast a number of knots according to circumstances. The subject was indicated by the colour of the threads, and the knots designated ...
— A General History and Collection of Voyages and Travels, Vol. 5 • Robert Kerr
... management of the great American dollar, which might make up, in a measure, for lack of discipline, when that dollar, like the proverbial charity, must cover a multitude of wants. Mrs. Travers had attended a school where embroidery was the chief number in the curriculum, and mathematics (after decimal fractions) made elective. Hence it was that the burden of responsibility came so early to Tavia, who was scarcely better able to ...
— Dorothy Dale • Margaret Penrose
... the Rule-of-Three: multiply your second and third term together, divide the product by the first, and your quotient will be the answer,—which you are but an ass if you cannot come at. The booby has not yet found-out, by any trial, that, do what one will, there is ever a cursed fraction, oftenest a decimal repeater, and no net integer quotient so much as ...
— Sartor Resartus, and On Heroes, Hero-Worship, and the Heroic in History • Thomas Carlyle
... moose is the animal that is most easily exterminated. Its trail is easily followed, and its habits are thoroughly known, down to three decimal places. As a hunter's reward it is Great. Strange to say, New Brunswick has found that the moose is an animal that it is possible, and even easy, to protect. The death of a moose is an event that is not easily concealed! Wherever it is thoroughly understood that the moose ...
— Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation • William T. Hornaday
... use of fractions were taught daily. The use of the decimal in the American coinage is of great advantage; it is easier and more intelligible to children than the clumsy old system of pounds, shillings, pence, and farthings. It is a system which would no doubt have been long ago adopted by England, if it had not been humiliating to our national pride ...
— The Book of the Bush • George Dunderdale
... soon as he could speak, to say, "No Pope, no Priest, no Surrender, Hurrah!" That was the first stage in his education. The second was taken at a National school where he learned the multiplication table and the decimal system with unusual ease. The master of a second-rate intermediate school heard of the boy's ability. Being anxious to earn the fees which a generous government gives to the masters of clever boys, this man offered to continue Gideon's education without asking payment ...
— The Red Hand of Ulster • George A. Birmingham
... illustration will show that the numbers we have to deal with are not actually those just mentioned. The clown that has a 9 on his body is portrayed just at the moment when two balls which he is juggling are in mid-air. The positions of these balls clearly convert his figure into the recurring decimal .[.9]. Now, since the recurring decimal .[.9] is equal to 9/9, and therefore to 1, it is evident that, although the clown who bears the figure 1 is absent, the man who bears the figure 9 by this simple artifice has for the occasion given his figure ...
— The Canterbury Puzzles - And Other Curious Problems • Henry Ernest Dudeney
... bending his head low over the fringe; she could not see his face. "I had inflammation of something or other, and I went partially off my head—got out of bed and walked about in an east wind with a temperature of a hundred and two, decimal point nine." ...
— The Tysons - (Mr. and Mrs. Nevill Tyson) • May Sinclair
... a 't' doesn't count for much, not any more than a decimal point. It doesn't make any difference whether a decimal point is placed before or after a figure, you know. It's only a ...
— Winning His "W" - A Story of Freshman Year at College • Everett Titsworth Tomlinson
... odd number," returned Thorwald. "With us the week is the basis of our decimal method of reckoning. We have one hundred minutes in an hour and ten ...
— Daybreak: A Romance of an Old World • James Cowan
... twos. Thus, one is avicho; two, raboi. Above two, so many twos, as four is raboi-raboi; and six, raboi-raboi-raboi. Ten is expressed by spreading both hands, and twenty by bringing fingers and toes together. Thus the Caribs. Decimal numeration is found among all the American aborigines, ancient and modern, juxtaposition ...
— The Andes and the Amazon - Across the Continent of South America • James Orton
... title, was plainly the issue number and date; enough things had been found numbered in series to enable her to identify the numerals and determine that a decimal system of numeration had been used. This was the one thousand and seven hundred and fifty-fourth issue, for Doma, 14837; then Doma must be the name of one of the Martian months. The word had turned up several times before. ...
— Omnilingual • H. Beam Piper
... in the decimal point," returned the other, with airy impudence. "Move it two to the left. Keno! There ...
— The Clarion • Samuel Hopkins Adams
... stocking-needle through your arm, and then square it, cube it, add decimal nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, two, one, and ...
— Blue Jackets - The Log of the Teaser • George Manville Fenn
... read. His "letters" and his "contracts" are material objects in the shape of bolos and other things, sent from one person to another with a verbal message, or strips of rattan with knots. His method of counting is decimal, and comprehends all numbers up to a hundred, though I am inclined to think that this last number represents ...
— The Manbos of Mindano - Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences, Volume XXIII, First Memoir • John M. Garvan
... ailments to combat, ten—no, let me see, two hundred and forty teeth to take to the dentist, not to mention characters and consciences in all their developments and phases, rising, on this appalling decimal system of yours, to regions of arithmetic far beyond ...
— The Daughters of Danaus • Mona Caird
... means (if it be justified) that it is not a human being at all, but a mere embodiment of two or three characteristics which are fully displayed within the first ten minutes, and then keep on repeating themselves, like a recurrent decimal. Strong theatrical effects can be produced by this method, which is that of the comedy of types, or of "humors." But it is now generally, and rightly, held that a character should be primarily an individual, and only incidentally (if ...
— Play-Making - A Manual of Craftsmanship • William Archer
... if a man had invented arithmetic, algebra, or the decimal system, he would have obtained no patent; but Bareme would have had a right of property in his Computations. Pascal, for his theory of the weight of the atmosphere, would not have been patented; instead of him, a glazier would ...
— The Philosophy of Misery • Joseph-Pierre Proudhon
... of the people was to be shown not only towards their nominees, but towards those who were charged with the final and most important act of selection. The winnowing processes in the election of representatives were to be carried out on a decimal system. The adult voters meeting in their several districts were to choose one-tenth of their number, this tenth being named the Notabilities of the Commune. These, some five or six hundred thousand in number, meeting in their several Departments, were thereupon to choose one-tenth of their ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose
... for the stop watch, which, to save clerical work, should be provided with a decimal dial similar to that shown in Fig. 4. The method of using this and recording the times depends upon the character of the time observations. In all cases, however, the stop watch times are recorded in the columns headed "Time" at the top of the right-hand half of the note sheet. These ...
— Shop Management • Frederick Winslow Taylor
... phenomenal endurance. He has been known to walk forty-eight hours at a stretch, and to pump ninety-six. His life is arduous and full of peril. A mistake in the working of a sum may keep him digging a fortnight without sleep. A repeating decimal in the answer might ...
— Literary Lapses • Stephen Leacock
... ordinary transactions. But any depreciation, however small—even the liability to depreciation without its reality—is enough to disorder exchange transactions. They are calculated to such an extremity of fineness that the change of a decimal may be fatal, and may turn a profit into a loss. Accordingly London has become the sole great settling-house of exchange transactions in Europe, instead of being formerly one of two. And this pre-eminence London will probably ...
— Lombard Street: A Description of the Money Market • Walter Bagehot
... applied to twelfths of the visible diameter of the disc of the Sun or Moon, which was much more convenient. However, the word is now almost obsolete in both senses, and partial eclipses, alike of the Sun and of the Moon, are defined in decimal parts of the diameter of the luminary—tenths or hundredths according to the amount of precision which is aimed at. Where an eclipse of the Moon is described as being of more than 12 Digits or more than 1.0 ( 1 diameter) ...
— The Story of Eclipses • George Chambers
... them? Is there not a certain glow of triumph in taming such a fraction? "Ladies and gentlemen, the fraction now before you is one that for years defied all efforts of a refining nature: it was, in a word, hopelessly vulgar. Treating it as a circulating decimal (the treadmill of fractions) only made matters worse. As a last resource, I reduced it to its lowest terms, and extracted its square root!" Joking apart, let me thank OLD CAT for some very kind words of sympathy, in reference to a correspondent (whose name I am happy to say I have now forgotten) ...
— A Tangled Tale • Lewis Carroll
... the Chaldeans taught the Egyptians the expansive power of steam, and the induction of electricity by pointed conductors; that from the most remote antiquity the Chinese were acquainted with decimal fractions, electro-magnetism, the mariner's compass, and the art of making glass; that lenses have been found in the ruins of Nineveh, and that an artificial currency was in circulation in the first cities built after the flood;[300] that astronomical observations were made in China, with so much ...
— Fables of Infidelity and Facts of Faith - Being an Examination of the Evidences of Infidelity • Robert Patterson
... inhabitants of both being connected by strong general similarity and occasionally identity in manners and customs, and having many physical characteristics common to both. Yet while the natives of the Louisiade use the decimal system of the Malays and Polynesians, the Torres Strait islanders have simple words to express the numerals one and two only, while three is represented ...
— Narrative Of The Voyage Of H.M.S. Rattlesnake, Commanded By The Late Captain Owen Stanley, R.N., F.R.S. Etc. During The Years 1846-1850. Including Discoveries And Surveys In New Guinea, The Louisiade • John MacGillivray
... to their height, criminals generally weigh less than normal individuals, whose weight in kilogrammes is given by the decimal figures of his height as expressed ...
— Criminal Man - According to the Classification of Cesare Lombroso • Gina Lombroso-Ferrero
... to which he contributed without fail one article each year from 1831 up to 1857 inclusive. In these carefully written papers he treats a great variety of topics relating to astronomy, chronology, decimal coinage, life assurance, bibliography and the history of science. Most of them are as valuable now as ...
— Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 8, Slice 2 - "Demijohn" to "Destructor" • Various
... proper to adopt what he has added. The thread of the discourse will be unbroken, and the reader, it is hoped, will prefer a regular continuity to a mere vacant space. The inverted comma in the margin of the text [transcriber's note: not used, but numbered with decimal rather than Roman numerals] will mark the supplemental part, as far as section 36, where the original proceeds to the end of the Dialogue. The sections of the Supplement will be marked, for the sake of distinction, with figures, instead ...
— A Dialogue Concerning Oratory, Or The Causes Of Corrupt Eloquence • Cornelius Tacitus
... rearrange in groups. It should have at least over a hundred of these cubes—if possible a thousand; they will be useful as toy bricks, and for innumerable purposes. Our civilization is now wedded to a decimal system of counting, and, to begin with, it will be well to teach the child to count up to ten and to stop there for a time. It is suggested by Mrs. Mary Everest Boole that it is very confusing to have distinctive names for eleven and twelve, which the child is apt to class with ...
— Mankind in the Making • H. G. Wells
... The decimal system of coinage was introduced in 1859; this, of course, as is well known, necessitated a new issue of ...
— The Stamps of Canada • Bertram Poole
... hour after her departure scratching his chin. He crossed his legs, shook his elevated foot, showed every sign of profound concentration. He was making up his mind to become a decimal point in the Woman Suffrage Movement. It was like making up his mind to be born again, and not so ...
— The Co-Citizens • Corra Harris
... man and wife the first fortnight, but wife and man ever after. The two figures change places: the unit is the decimal and the decimal ...
— Imaginary Conversations and Poems - A Selection • Walter Savage Landor
... the slightest clue. She knew, indeed, little herself, whatever she may have guessed. As for Hungerford, he was dumb. He refused to consider the matter. But he roundly maintained once or twice, without any apparent relevance, that a woman was like a repeating decimal—you could follow her, but you never could reach her. He usually added to this: "Minus one, Marmion," meaning thus to exclude the girl who preferred him to any one else. When I ventured to suggest that Miss Treherne might also be excepted, ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker
... Osnomian chronometer. This was an instrument resembling the odometer of an automobile, whose numerous revolving segments revealed a large and constantly increasing number—the date and time of the Osnomian day, expressed in a decimal number of the ...
— The Skylark of Space • Edward Elmer Smith and Lee Hawkins Garby
... "division," and "met," "ten." This derivation, which he first heard of in Cairo, is, he believes, a significant appellation for a metrological monument such as the Great Pyramid, and coincides with its five-sided, five-cornered, etc., features (see anteriorly, p. 255) and decimal divisions. But surely a name, which in this metrological and arithmetical view of "powers and times of ten and five," meant division into ten, and which divisional metrological ideas applied, according ...
— Archaeological Essays, Vol. 1 • James Y. Simpson
... number of rings that they hear. When, therefore, the number of stations to be rung by code exceeds five, it is better to employ combinations of long and short rings, and a good way is to adopt a partial decimal system, omitting the numbers higher than five in each ten, and employing long rings to indicate the tens digits and short rings to indicate the units digit, ...
— Cyclopedia of Telephony & Telegraphy Vol. 1 - A General Reference Work on Telephony, etc. etc. • Kempster Miller
... higher rhythmic forms evidence will be afforded by a comparison of the total durations of the first and second five-groups included in the decimal series. Difference of some kind is of course to be looked for; equivalence between the groups would only be accidental, and inequality, apart from amount and constancy, is insignificant. In the results here presented the differentiation is, in the first place, of considerable value, the average ...
— Harvard Psychological Studies, Volume 1 • Various
... Bering's Straits, not only in the hands of merchants but in many private houses. It consists of a wooden frame ordinarily a foot long and six inches wide. There are ten metal wires strung across this frame, and ten balls of wood on each wire. The Russian currency is a decimal one, and by means of this machine computations are carried on with wonderful rapidity. I have seen numbers added by a boy and a machine faster than a New York bank teller could make the same reckoning. ...
— Overland through Asia; Pictures of Siberian, Chinese, and Tartar - Life • Thomas Wallace Knox
... Decay kadukeco. Decaying kaduka. Decease (v.) morti. Deceit artifiko—eco. Deceive trompi. Deceived, to be trompigxi. December Decembro. Decent deca. Deception trompo. Decide decidi. Decided decida. Decimal decimalo. Decipher decxifri. Decisive decidiga. Deck (adorn) ornami. Deck (ship) ferdeko. Declaim deklami. Declaration deklaracio. Declaration (of love) amesprimo. Declare sciigi, anonci. Declension deklinacio. Decline ekfinigxo. Decline (health) ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes
... regulate the value thereof." As a consequence of giving this power to Congress, we have a uniform currency throughout the union. We have also, instead of the awkward system of reckoning by pounds, shillings, and pence, the more convenient decimal mode of calculation by dollars and cents. The old system was rendered the more inconvenient by the difference in the value of a pound, shilling, and penny in the different states. A merchant in a New England state, buying goods in New York or Philadelphia, must, in order to put prices ...
— The Government Class Book • Andrew W. Young
... however, varies a few cents according to the place where it is exchanged. Bank of England notes or pounds are never worth less than four shillings and twopence, i.e., 480 cents or halfpennies, which, of course, is four dollars and 80 cents, there being 100 cents in a dollar. The decimal currency is extremely simple when once understood. Never less than 4.80 is given for an English pound, but sometimes ...
— A start in life • C. F. Dowsett
... Of course things, even these little things, have altered. You lived in the days of the decimal system, the Arab system—tens, and little hundreds and thousands. We have eleven numerals now. We have single figures for both ten and eleven, two figures for a dozen, and a dozen dozen makes a gross, a great hundred, you know, a ...
— When the Sleeper Wakes • Herbert George Wells
... offence to the self-love or the self-respect of any one. Citoyen for all men and Citoyenne for all women was absolutely tasteful, modest, and dignified; but some things, though they are such kindred things, cannot be done as well as others. The same imaginative commonwealth invented a decimal chronology, and a new era, very handy and very clear; but the old week of seven days came back and replaced the week of ten days, and the Year of our Lord resumed the place of the Year of the Republic, as Monsieur and Madame returned victorious over Citoyen and Citoyenne. Yet the reform ...
— Imaginary Interviews • W. D. Howells
... in the following pages refer to specific cases, but not to the order of their treatment, since the classification is a decimal system used to ...
— Stammering, Its Cause and Cure • Benjamin Nathaniel Bogue
... geographical boundary in a sea channel crossed from Great Britain in three hours or in an hour and a-half, according to the line of passage selected. It is inhabited by some five millions, whose native language is English, with the exception of a decimal percentage of mountaineers, who nearly all speak English as well as Irish. The race is more mixed than in any other district of the kingdom containing the same amount of population. The northern coasts are thickly peopled by Scotch settlers. In the south and ...
— The Quarterly Review, Volume 162, No. 324, April, 1886 • Various
... These things the strangers probably taught the Shumiro-Accads, but at the same time borrowed from them their way of counting. The Turanian races to this day have this peculiarity, that they do not care for the decimal system in arithmetic, but count by dozens and sixties, preferring numbers that can be divided by twelve and sixty. The Chinese even now do not measure time by centuries or periods of a hundred years, but by a cycle or period of ...
— Chaldea - From the Earliest Times to the Rise of Assyria • Znade A. Ragozin
... the characters on the same tablet, according to the relative importance of the text, show a striving after clearness and method such as can by no means be said to be a characteristic of Classical Greek inscriptions.'[*] A decimal system of numbers was in use, the highest single amount referred to being 19,000, and percentages were evidently well understood, as a whole series of tablets is devoted ...
— The Sea-Kings of Crete • James Baikie
... she continued, without a rhetorical pause to indicate the decimal points between her thoughts, "I was interested in what you said about immortality last Sunday. Now, I wonder if you know it is an actual fact that by breathing rhythmically thirty times, counting three while you inhale, three ...
— A Circuit Rider's Wife • Corra Harris
... or, if there are two hundred or more individual measurements in the distribution, it may be found interesting to calculate the median point to the nearest hundredth of a scale unit. Very seldom will anything be gained by carrying the calculation beyond the second decimal place. ...
— How to Teach • George Drayton Strayer and Naomi Norsworthy
... to measure it; (2) the C.G.S. unit that serves to measure such grandeur (granted the adoption of the C.G.S. system); (3) practical units, which, in general, have a special name for each kind of magnitude, and are a decimal multiple or sub-multiple of the C.G.S. unit, except for time and angles; (4) finally, decimal multiples and sub-multiples of these practical units, that are in ...
— Scientific American Supplement, No. 595, May 28, 1887 • Various
... AN ECLIPSE. The proportion which the eclipsed part of the surface of the sun or moon bears to the diameter; it is sometimes expressed in digits, but more frequently as a decimal, the diameter being taken ...
— The Sailor's Word-Book • William Henry Smyth
... books, wept when before my eyes men exploited science for their own personal ends. But my enthusiasm did not last long. The trouble is that every science has a beginning but not an end, like a recurring decimal. Zoology has discovered 35,000 kinds of insects, chemistry reckons 60 elements. If in time tens of noughts can be written after these figures. Zoology and chemistry will be just as far from their end ...
— The Chorus Girl and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov
... call to mind that no adequate provision has yet been made for the uniformity of weights and measures also contemplated by the Constitution. The great utility of a standard fixed in its nature and founded on the easy rule of decimal proportions is sufficiently obvious. It led the Government at an early stage to preparatory steps for introducing it, and a completion of the work will be a just title ...
— State of the Union Addresses of James Madison • James Madison
... the Man; the triumphant tribune and citizen. A number so symmetrical as that really rises out of the region of science into the region of art. It is a pattern, like the egg-and-dart ornament or the Greek key. One might edge a wall-paper or fringe a robe with a recurring decimal. And while the voter luxuriated in this light exactitude of the numbers, a thought crossed his mind and he almost leapt to his feet. "Why, good heavens!" he cried. "I won that election; and it was won by one vote! But for me it would have been the despicable, broken-backed, ...
— Alarms and Discursions • G. K. Chesterton
... and the most accurate chronometric reckoning, old Mr. Beirne timed his proceedings to a decimal. The last line of the slow-read poem died in a deafening uproar without. Every bell in the city, it seemed, every whistle and chime, every firecracker and penny-trumpet and cannon (there was but one), to say nothing of many ...
— V. V.'s Eyes • Henry Sydnor Harrison
... thought I had made a discovery as confidently as Pythagoras did when he demonstrated the forty-seventh proposition of the first book of Euclid. I was proportionately annoyed when I afterwards discovered that I had been anticipated in finding out that 'a decimal is a fraction whose denominator is a unit with as many ciphers annexed as the numerator has places,' or rather in finding out precisely ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 89, March, 1865 • Various
... other, has done away with this piece of egotism. Purbach and Mullerus, in the fifteenth century, contributed most to the advancement of astronomy in their day. To the latter the world is indebted for the introduction of decimal fractions, which completed our arithmetical notation, and formed the second of the three steps by which, in modern times, the science of numbers has been so greatly improved; and yet both of these men believed in the most childish absurdities—at ...
— Lectures of Col. R. G. Ingersoll, Volume I • Robert Green Ingersoll
... absolute weight. But now with the atom of hydrogen dissected, so to speak, and found to consist of 18 somethings, while the atom of oxygen consisted of 290 of the same things, the sixteen to one relationship reappears: 290 divided by 18 gives us 16 and a minute decimal fraction. Again the nitrogen number divided by 18 gives us 14 and a minute fraction as the result, and that is the accepted atomic weight of nitrogen. This gave us a glimpse of a principle that might run all through the table of atomic ...
— Occult Chemistry - Clairvoyant Observations on the Chemical Elements • Annie Besant and Charles W. Leadbeater
... are too extense; Could you slacken and condense? Your rank overgrowths reduce Till your kinds abound with juice? Earth, crowded, cries, 'Too many men!' My counsel is, kill nine in ten, And bestow the shares of all On the remnant decimal. Add their nine lives to this cat; Stuff their nine brains in one hat; Make his frame and forces square With the labors he must dare; Thatch his flesh, and even his years With the marble which he rears. There, growing slowly old at ease No faster than his planted trees, He may, by warrant ...
— Poems - Household Edition • Ralph Waldo Emerson
... algebra from the Mohammedans, and, without algebra, astronomical knowledge of to-day would have been impossible. Christianity did not even invent figures. We got those from the Arabs. The very word "algebra" is Arabic. The decimal system, I believe, however, was due to a German, but whether he was a Christian or not, I ...
— The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Volume VIII. - Interviews • Robert Green Ingersoll
... to master the use of the two methods given in Lessons V. and VI. should proceed to practice them with stones of known specific gravities until he can at least get the correct result to the first decimal place. It is not to be expected that accurate results can be had in the second decimal place, with the balances usually available to jewelers. When the learner can determine specific gravities with some certainty he should then ...
— A Text-Book of Precious Stones for Jewelers and the Gem-Loving Public • Frank Bertram Wade
... decimal arithmetic, but without detail, may now be given to him, as it will not appear extraordinary to him that a unit should represent ten by having its place, or column changed; and nothing more is necessary in decimal arithmetic, than to consider that ...
— Practical Education, Volume II • Maria Edgeworth
... we were being bright, at that! We'd figured every move to the third decimal point. The only uncertain factor in our calculations, as we thought, was you. But with you disposed of, dead to the world, and Madame de Montalais off in another part of the chateau calling the servants to help, leaving her rooms wide open to us—the job didn't ...
— Alias The Lone Wolf • Louis Joseph Vance
... perfect language than their own, which different causes and accidental communication still continue to bring to them;" and he adds that "among the Melanesian islands scarcely one was found by us which did not possess, in some cases still imperfectly, the decimal system of numeration in addition to their own, in which they reckon ...
— Critiques and Addresses • Thomas Henry Huxley
... with his head on one side. He was rather proud of them, seeing he had utterly forgotten now how to work decimal fractions, and could not have done a quadratic ...
— Seven Little Australians • Ethel Sybil Turner
... South Sea islands are said to have been able to count as high as 100,000. But mere counting does not imply either the possession or the use of anything that can be really called the mathematical faculty, the exercise of which in any broad sense has only been possible since the introduction of the decimal notation. The Greeks, the Romans, the Egyptians, the Jews, and the Chinese had all such cumbrous systems, that anything like a science of arithmetic, beyond very simple operations, was impossible; ...
— Darwinism (1889) • Alfred Russel Wallace
... at a true absolute or a true infinite. The conceptions of the infinite and absolute as ordinarily understood are tiresome because they are unmeaning, but there is no peculiar sanctity or mystery in them. We might as well make an infinitesimal series of fractions or a perpetually recurring decimal the object of our worship. They are the widest and also the thinnest of human ideas, or, in the language of logicians, they have the greatest extension and the least comprehension. Of all words they may be truly said to be the most inflated with a false meaning. They have been handed down ...
— Sophist • Plato
... number in words a great deal further than we usually do, would we find out but some fit denominations to signify them by; whereas, in the way we take now to name them, by millions of millions of millions, &c., it is hard to go beyond eighteen, or at most, four and twenty, decimal progressions, without confusion. But to show how much distinct names conduce to our well reckoning, or having useful ideas of numbers, let us see all these following figures in one continued line, as the marks ...
— An Essay Concerning Humane Understanding, Volume I. - MDCXC, Based on the 2nd Edition, Books I. and II. (of 4) • John Locke
... demand, too, for bishop will also fall off, Till the tithe of one, taken in kind be enough. But, as fractions imply that we'd have to dissect, And to cutting up Bishops I strongly object. We've a small, fractious prelate whom well we could spare, Who has just the same decimal worth, to a hair, And, not to leave Ireland too much in the lurch. We'll let her have Exeter, ...
— The Complete Poems of Sir Thomas Moore • Thomas Moore et al
... he took his seat in congress at Annapolis, and during that session he proposed and caused the adoption of our present system of decimal currency. ...
— Thomas Jefferson • Edward S. Ellis et. al.
... last, "I best tell you the whole story that's in my mind. I told you I've been figuring it out. Well, it's figured to the last decimal. You think you know me. Maybe you do. Maybe you know only part of the things I know about myself. If you knew them all I'd hate to think of the contempt you'd have to hand me. You see, Bat, I'm a coward, a terrible moral coward. Oh, I'm not scared of any man living ...
— The Man in the Twilight • Ridgwell Cullum
... his velocity figures, hoping against hope that he'd made a mistake somewhere, dropped a decimal point or forgotten to divide by ...
— The Measure of a Man • Randall Garrett
... he begins to contemplate exchanging it for something more up to date or interesting. But let a rival collector march forth with igniting enthusiasm and proclaim a desire for the scorned objects, and that very moment does the possessor tighten his grip on them and add a decimal or two to their value. So was it with the trustees of Saint Margaret's. For the first time in their lives they desired the incurable ward and ...
— The Primrose Ring • Ruth Sawyer
... sea-calves, or sea-forms, offspring of the sea (Halosydna). This counting by fives, is significant, hinting the earliest abstraction from the sensuous through number, specially by means of the five-system, though Homer knew well the decimal system (see Od. XVI, 245. Iliad II. 126). Menelaus with his companions is to take on this sea-form, and be counted with the rest, though in disguise; then when Proteus lies down to sleep with his herds or Forms, he is to be seized; that is, seized in repose, as he is himself, ...
— Homer's Odyssey - A Commentary • Denton J. Snider
... children to count, the decimal system should be kept well in mind, and the teacher should see that thirteen means three-ten, and that the children can touch the three and the ten as they speak the word. Eleven and twelve ought to be called oneteen and twoteen, half in joke. ...
— The Child Under Eight • E.R. Murray and Henrietta Brown Smith
... scruple, Lat. scrupulus, "a little sharpe stone falling sometime into a man's shooe" (Cooper), for very small things, a stone for heavier goods. Gk. {drachma}, whence our dram, means a handful. Our decimal system is due to our possession of ten digits, or fingers, and calculation comes from Lat. calculus, ...
— The Romance of Words (4th ed.) • Ernest Weekley |
